HUNTINGTON BEACH – As a community, Sunset Beach is a hodgepodge, from multimillion-dollar mansions cozying up to Huntington Harbour, to the gritty main commercial drag along Pacific Coast Highway with its mid-century melange of rustic eateries, several tattoo and massage parlors and a fabled tiki bar.

“I like the funkiness. I love what that area is,” said resident Garry Brown, co-founder and president of the nonprofit Orange County Coastkeeper environmental group.

So when Big Brother, in the form of Huntington Beach, threatened to bring its brand of redevelopment, Brown and the disparate personalities that make up Sunset Beach brought the funk and fought back.

What raised community ire was a proposal that could have brought 250 units of housing and new commercial construction and development to a 10-acre stretch of land that was home to the Peter’s Landing Marina complex and that popular tiki bar: Don the Beachcomber.

On Monday, residents who were unsuccessful in a bid to prevent annexation by Huntington Beach in 2011 found that, sometimes, you can beat city hall. They persuaded the City Council to go against the recommendation of city staff, planners and developers and leave the land alone.

As part of updating the city’s General Plan, the commercial zone in Sunset Beach was identified as an “opportunity zone” that could benefit from rezoning and redevelopment.

Although city officials stressed nothing was imminent or binding on the council, and no plans were in place, alarms rang out in the seaside community just south of Seal Beach.

Residents came in droves to City Hall, sent a flood of e-mails to city leaders and flocked to social media.

More than 50 residents from Sunset Beach went to both a council study session and a regular meeting on the issue and spoke passionately. Many stayed for more than 7 1/2 hours, but were rewarded when the council decided unanimously to leave the zoning unchanged.

The decision was met with loud applause from those who remained.

Don the Beachcomber, along with a wooden water tower, is maybe the most identifiable place in Sunset Beach.

On Monday, a number of residents gathered at the restaurant’s bar where televisions were tuned not to ESPN, but live coverage of the council meeting. According to Emerson Duque, general manager of Don the Beachcomber, the bar erupted when the decision was announced.

“I think the voices of the residents were definitely heard,” he said.

“What happens in (the Sunset Beach) corridor has to be done very carefully,” said Councilwoman Barbara Delgleize.

Mayor Jill Hardy said she had received 80 emails about the proposal before she was even aware of it.

Although residents at the meeting said they were concerned about potential issues of inadequate infrastructure, traffic congestion on a narrow road and pollution if the land was developed, they also spoke to a way of life, a sense of place and the qualities that make Sunset Beach unique.

Gayle Winnen, a longtime resident, said the proposal was exactly the kind of thing residents feared when the community was annexed.

“Huntington Beach thinks nothing of building to the max,” she said.

A number of residents said they had been promised by former council members that Sunset Beach wouldn’t be changed.

“I love the quaintness (of Sunset Beach), that’s why I bought my house there. I could have bought anywhere, but I chose here,” said Charyl May.

Central to that sense of place and uniqueness is Don the Beachcomber. The last of the Don the Beachcombers in the Southland, it was the fate of the landmark that seemed to affect people the most.

The Don the Beachcomber brand flourished with the popularity of tiki culture in the 1940s and ’50s. Although Sunset Beach’s Don is not an original, and was preceded by Sam’s Seafood and Kona before it opened in 2006, it still retains a special place in people’s hearts.

Sheryon Katsaris, whose father owned Sam’s Seafood, came down from Lake Tahoe to voice her opinion.

“Sam’s Seafood is a landmark. My father had a vision to build something unique for your communinty. Not just for himself, but for you,” she said, “When you drive down the road, you don’t want to see a high-rise, you want to see Sunset Beach.”

Greg Mellen is a freelancer and veteran award-winning reporter with more than 30 years experience at papers in California and Missouri. He previously wrote for the Orange County Register and Long Beach Register. He received his master's degree from the University of Missouri School of Journalism and was a faculty member and sports editor at the Columbia Missourian. In his free time he likes to read and dabble in fiction writing, which he tries to keep out of the newspaper.

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